CHURCHES AND GAMBLING

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25134, 15 March 1947, Page 10

CHURCHES AND GAMBLING

PROHIBITION NOT SOUGHT STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION P.A.) WELLINGTON. March 14. “We recognise that the state of public opinion is not such as to make the p-o--libition of organised gambling a pracical possibility.’’ said the Rev. P. Gladstone Hughes, a Presbyterian minister yf Wellington, in evidence before the Gaming Commission to-day. Subject to that limitation, he said, the churches believed that Parliament must legislate on moral matters in the interests of society, he said, and such legislation should seek to prevent or punish breaches of the moral law. and never to condone them or derive revenue from them.

The churches he represented, therefore, advocated the maximum restriction of organised gambling. The chairman (Mr Justice Finlay): The problem is one initially of education from the Church.

Mr Hughes: Yes. The churches envisage the ultimate prohibition of organised gambling by the gradual elimination of inducements.

Mr Justice Finlay: You do not recommend the prohibition of gambling now because the prohibition would offend against the ethnic standards of the community. Mr Hughes: It would drive gambling underground.

The churches suggested, the witness added, a strengthening of the law for the suppression of illegal gambling as well as the establishment of a special department of the Police Force to deal with it.

Other points put forward by the witness were that there should be an immediate and continuing reduction in the number of totalisator permits, as well as the elimination of the profits of racing and trotting clubs from the totalisator

To Mr E. D. Blundell, for the Racing Conference, the witness said that the churches—of which he represented seven—depended to a very large extent on assistance from the State to swing the pendulum of public opinion away from forms of organised gambling. Mr C. S. Thomas (for the Trotting Conference): You recognise that the Church must deal with circumstances as they are? Mr Hughes: We have to tolerate them. Mr Thomas: You realise that the Commission may recommend that some form of off the course betting should be adopted? i Witness: Yes.